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WHAT ARE WE HGHTING ABOUT i 

— -ISSUED BY THE 

Maryland Council of Defense 
703 union trust building 

BALTIMORE, MD. 

IQI7 



The first thing needful in the work of national de- 
fense is that every loyal citizen should clearly and 
fully understand the meaning and necessity of the 
present war, and the gravity of the crisis that con- 
fronts this country and the entire civilized world; and 
that every citizen-soldier should know for what he 
fights, and from what he is helping to save his own 
people and the generations of humanity that are to 
come. It is for this reason that the Maryland Council 
of Defense places this brief pamphlet in the hands of 
the people of Maryland — both those at home and 
those absent in the service of their State and Country. 



( 



2 



WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING ABOUT? 

There are some people who do not yet quite understand 
why the United States had to go to war, or what our boys 
in France are going to fight for. If you meet any such 
people, tell theni that this is the answer: 

When bandits break loose in a peaceful neighborhood, 
killing and robbing, what is done? The Sheriff summons a 
posse of citizens, whose duty it is to leave their ordinary 
vocations and assist him in putting down the law-breakers 
and restoring peace and order to the community. To serve, 
even at personal risk, in thus putting down lawlessness and 
violence is every citizen's duty. It is also required by his 
own interests, if he desires that he, his women-folk and his 
children shall be able to live and go about their business 
in security. 

Just this is what has happened to the world. A great and 
powerful nation, mad with pride and ambition, has suddenly 
thrown over all restraints of civilization ; has assaulted its 
peaceful neighbors with, at first, irresistible force; has 
shown utter contempt for the laws that govern the relations 
of countries to one another, and for its own solemn com- 
pacts; has gone through Europe and a part of Asia, devas- 
tating smiling lands, enslaving thousands of their popula- 
tion, and (in conjunction with the allies which it controls) 
killing hundreds of thousands of non-combatant men, women 
and children; and has finally declared war upon mankind 
at large by sending forth its submarines to lie in wait on 
the sea, the common highway of all nations, there to sink 
the ships and murder the citizens, not of Germany's enemies 
only, but of all countries. 

When these outrages reached this last point, the United 
States decided to join the posse of the civilized world, and 
put an end to the German reign of terror on sea and land. 
We could no more have kept out of this war than a decent 
citizen could refuse to serve in the posse of his county when 

D. Of D. 
i^lAY 20 IQlft 



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.M345 ^ 

Copy 1 



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outlaws are terrorizing the whole region — and are lying in 
ambush to do murder upon his own road to market. There 
are, no doubt, some men who would even then skulk in a 
safe place, hoping that somebody else would take all the 
risks. But the people of the United States have not hitherto 
been that sort of people — and thej do not propose to be that 
sort now. They are neither fools nor cowards; and skulk- 
ing at such a time would be folly as well as ignominy. For 
it would only expose us, without allies or friends anywhere, 
to be attacked alone, sooner or later, by the outlaw nations 
after they had, through our failure to support the common 
cause of humanity, been enabled to triumph over those who 
are now resisting them. 

This, then, is why we are in the war — and why we are 
not going to quit, however great the sacrifice, until this men- 
ace is removed from the world; until women and children, 
even in little and peaceful countries, can live in safety from 
sudden outrage by invading hordes; until it is made clear 
to all men that ruthless violence and faithlessness are not 
the road to national power and prosperity, but that justice 
and law, good faith and mutual consideration, must prevail 
in the relations between peoples, as between individuals; 
until the outlaw government, and the misguided nation which 
still supports it, are defeated in their present purposes and 
ambitions, and are also made powerless to bring another 
such disaster upon mankind in our time or in our children's 
time. 

If there are any who do not yet realize the spirit and the 
methods of the government which we have to fight, they will 
find in the following pages a very few out of countless re- 
corded examples of the sort of horror and lawlessness to 
which we mean to put an end, and against which we intend 
that our own people at home shall be safeguarded once 
f.n all. 



WHAT HAPPENED AT DINANT 

Dinant is a town in Belgium on the River Meuse; it had 
before the war a population of about 7,500. Upon it the 
Germans descended on August 21st, 1914; and there in a 
few days they massacred more than 700 civilians — ^nearly 
one in every ten of the inhabitants. Of the victims whose 
names have been recorded, 49 were women (of whom eight 
were over 70 years of age); 9 were little girls (under six- 
teen); 29 were boys, from seven to sixteen; and 10 were 
infants under five. Of the men, 15 were over seventy years 
old, and three at least were priests. The town was also 
systematically set on fire and more than a thousand houses 
burned. 

Of the scenes of horror in Dinant on those August days 
we have pictures from German sources. In 1915, after the 
publication of the reports of the official Belgian com- 
missions which investigated the atrocities in Belgium, the 
German government was constrained to publish a 'White- 
washing" report of its own. The whitewashing did not con- 
sist in a disproof of the above facts, but only in an attempt 
to justify them. The German ''White Book," for example, 
prints such accounts as the following by German officers 
(relating to the massacre in a single section of the town) : 

(a) Lieut. Von Eochow states that he arrived at Les 
Rivages (at Dinant) at nightfall on the 23rd and saw 
at the Ferry a great heap of bodies. He continues : "In 
the course of the evening, when the crossing had been 
begun, and things were quieter, we noticed that several 
wounded people were lying among them. These were 
brought away. I myself took a girl of about eight years 
who had a wound in her face, and an elderly woman who 
had been shot in the upper part of the thigh, to the 
women who had been taken prisoners, and handed them 
over to a doctor." (&) Staff-Surgeon Dr. Petrentz came 
on this great heap of bodies without knowing who had 
shot them. "I have heard," he says, "that the Grena- 
dier Regiment No. 101 carried out an execution there. 
Among the people who were shot were some women, 



but by far the greater number were yotmg lads. Undef 
the heap I discovered a girl of about fire years of age, 
alive and without any injuries. I took her out and 
brought her down to the house where the women were. 
She took chocolate, was quite happy, and was clearly 
unaware of the seriousness of the situation. I then 
searched the heap of bodies to see whether any other 
children were underneath. But we only found one girl 
of about ten years of age, who had a wound in the lower 
part of the thigh. I had her wound dressed and brought 
her at once to the women." 

The staff-surgeon seems a little disturbed by ail this, but 
not much. He alludes to it as an "execution," as if that 
explained everything. In German eyes it did. 

The account of the massacre at this point, drawn up by 
the Public Prosecutor of Dinant, is as follows : 

(c) The inhabitants were seized on the arrival of the 
Germans and kept under guard near Kocher-Bayard. 
When the fire of the French slackened, the Germans 
began to construct a bridge. But they were still an- 
noyed by a few shots. As these were infrequent, the 
Germans — honestly or otherwise — came to the conclu- 
sion that they were fired by franc-tireurs (snipers). 
They sent M. Bourdon, the Assistant Registrar of the 
Court, to announce that if the firing continued, all the 
prisoners would be executed. He did so, and recross- 
ing the Meuse, surrendered himself and informed the 
German officers that he had been able to make sure that 
only French soldiers were firing. A few more French 
bullets came, and then a monstrous event took place, 
which one's mind would refuse to believe were it not that 
the survivors who bear witness and the gaping wounds 
of the corpses furnished absolutely conclusive proof. 
The whole mass of prisoners — men, women and chil- 
dren — were pushed up against a wall and shot. 

Shot Before the Eyes of Their Wives and Children 

Other scenes are described by a neutral, a Dutch citizen 
resident in Dinant. His narrative is published in the Am- 
sterdam Telegraaf of December 8, 1914. Describing the 
glaughter in Parade Square, he says that 



The women and children wel-e separated from the 
men, the latter being placed on one side of the little 
square and the women and children on the other side. 
The firing party placed between them was ordered to 
fire. After 'a scene of heartrending agony, during which 
the women and children knelt before the officers, 153 
victims fell writhing in a welter of blood. Two men 
who fell unhurt and four others who were slightly 
wounded pretended to be dead. The officer said : ^'Those 
able to rise must stand as the soldiers will not fire 
again." The six men mentioned rose. The officer ordered 
another volley and the men fell. The officer then or- 
dered the machine gunners to fire some time on the 
bodies. The women and children were present all this 
time and were rendered distracted by grief and terror. 
The officer was unmoved, and said in bad French, 
"Mesdames, I've done my duty." 

Meanwhile the pillaging of the town had begun. The 
Germans possessed most modern implements and ap- 
pliances for opening safes, and they employed also 
chemical means for that purpose. A banker and his 
son who refused to say where the safes were, were shot. 
The plundering did not cease with houses — men in the 
street were searched for money. 

M. Poncelet, one of the most respected merchants in 
Dinant, fled with his wife and six children. They were 
overtaken. An officer ordered him to be shot, and on 
a soldier refusing to shoot, the officer shot Poncelet with 
his revolver. M. Himers was killed in similar circum- 
stances at Leffe (a suburb) under the eyes of his wife. 
He was the owner of a factory and Consul of the Argen- 
tine Republic. 

The German Defense 



What is the German defense? To an American there can 
be no defense. Civilized man — as he understands the term — 
simply does not, under any provocation, do these things to 
women, to young children, to babes in their mothers' arms. 
Yet the justification offered by the German government for 
the massacre referred to in the first three of the above ex- 
tracts is worth noting. The substance of it is given in ex- 
tract (c). The Germans were trying to cross the river on 



pontoon bridges ; they were being fired upon by a small body 
of French troops on the far side. Some German soldiers 
presently declared that some of the shots were tired from 
houses in the town; whereupon the promiscuous butch- 
ery of unarmed Belgians began. In the ^'commotion and 
confusion/' it was, of course, impossible for the Germans 
to know that the shots were not fired by French or by regu- 
lar Belgian soldiers. It is denied by the Belgians that the 
alleged firing by civilians took place. If there had been such 
firing, it would, of course, in no degree have given even a 
legal justification for the wholesale massacre of unarmed 
hostages. Germany before the war (1908) had pledged her- 
self to the rule' of civilized warfare which provides that the 
inhabitants of occupied territory shall not be punished for 
any acts committed by individuals, unless they "are jointly 
and severally responsible for those acts." ("Kegulations con- 
cerning Laws and Customs of War on Land." Art. 51.) Yet 
it was the regular German practice, on entering any town, 
to take large numbers of hostages — including, usually, tow^n 
officials, priests and leading citizens — and to kill all these 
innocent persons if any resistance or disturbance took place 
anywhere in the neighborhood. Thus the German Governor- 
General announced on October 5, 1914, that "the inhabitants 
of places near railways and telegraph lines whicli are de- 
stroyed will be punished without mercy, whether or not 
people of these places are guilty of this destruction. For this 
purpose hostages have been taken, and at the first attempt 
to destroy any railway, telegraph or telephone line they will 
be shot immediately." In one case (according to the testi- 
mony of a Belgian professor) a German train on the rail- 
road between Brussels and Mons caused the explosion of one 
of the detonators, placed on the track to call the conductor's 
attention to a signal. Immediately the soldiers seized all 
the peasants in the neighborliood and shot them down. At 
Rheims a list of seventy-one Intstages was posted, and it was 
announced that these would be hanged "if there was the least 
attempt at disorder" anywhere in the city. 



These things are only examples of what has happened 
in scores of Belgian and Fr^ich towns and villages. In Ar- 
menia yet more unspeakable atrocities were co^nmitted. 
More than half a million Armenian Christians have been 
systematically massacred by Turkish troops completely 
subject to the control of German officials. 



It is thus that Prussia makes war — against the 
women and children of a country with which she 
had no quarrel and whose neutrality she was solemn- 
ly pledged to respect. And if she ly^ins victory by 
such means as these, this way of making war will 
become the accepted way, to be followed by Ger- 
many herself and other ambitious nations in the fu- 
ture. Scenes like these we may expect to have some 
day in America, if Germany triumphs, and her stan- 
dards of national conduct are vindicated by success. 

We can, and we must, see to it now that such things as 
have been done in Belgium and France, in Serbia and x4.r- 
menia, are never done again anywhere in the world. The 
first requisite to prevent their being done again is to make 
it plain, in this great instance, that a nation which adopts 
these methods of beginning and carrying on war, arrays 
against itself the entire force of the humanity and the civili- 
zation which it has outraged; that "frightfulness'^ and con- 
tempt for the law of nations are not the way to victory, 
but to sure defeat. 



CRIMES AGAINST WOMEN 

German Testimony 

Dr. Harry Stuermer, a German officer, former correspond- 
ent of the Cologne Gazette, testifies that he was assured by 
one of the best-known German war correspondents, Paul 



Schweder, that "there had been thousands of cases of women 
and young girls of the best Belgian and French families" 
assaulted by German soldiers, who remained unpunished in 
most instances. 

(See summary of Dr. Stuermer's book, "Two War Years in 
Constantinople," in The Nation, New York. September 20, 1917.) 



ENSLAVEMENT OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN BY THE 
GERMANS IN NORTHERN FRANCE 

(a) The Announcement 

In Holy Week of 1916, the German Military Commander 
at Lille (France) caused a proclamation to be posted an- 
nouncing that the inhabitants would be "removed from their 
homes and transported into the country," in order to be put 
to work in the agricultural districts of the occupied portion 
of France. It was consequently forbidden that any should 
absent themselves from their legal domiciles between 9 P. M. 
and 6 A. M. On the door of each house, on the morning it 
was to be visited, a notice was attached, to the effect that 
"all residents of this house, with the exception of children 
under 14 years, their mothers, and old people, must prepare 
to be deported in an hour and a half." It was further an- 
nounced that an officer would come to select the individuals 
to be actually deported. 

(b) The Departure 

"They took," writes one witness, ^^men and women, young 
men an (J girls, in all parts of the city. Young girls were 
carried off from sixteen years of age upwards; men and 
women up to the age of fifty-five years." "The officer passed 
along," writes another witness, "pointing out those whom 
he selected, and leaving them from ten minutes to an hour 
to get ready for their departure. Antoine D , and hie 



sister, 22 years old, were picked out. The officer showed 
some hesitation about leaving their little sister, not yet four- 
teen; soon after their aged grandmother became so weak 
from terror and grief that the last rites of the church were 
administered to her. The Germans finally decided not to 
take the little girl; but in one case an old man, in another 
two invalids, were deprived of the young women who were 
their only caretakers. The Germans meanwhile made merry 
over the whole affair, adding petty annoyances to their 
cruelty. For example, at the house of a doctor, B's uncle, 
the lady of the house was told she might choose which of 
her two servant girls she would rather keep. She gave the 
preference to the older one. 'Very well,' said the German, 
'that's the one we will take.' The poor victims were first 
assembled in some building — a church or a schoolhouse — 
and then, herded together pell-mell, all classes and all sorts, 
innocent young girls side by side with women of the town — 
were conducted by soldiers, with a band at their head, to 
the railroad station. Here they were kept until the evening, 
when they left, knowing nothing of where they were going 
or the kind of labor that was to be imposed upon them." 

(From "Les Deportations du Nord de la France," 1917, by 
Jules Basdevant, Professor of International Law in the Univer- 
sity of Grenoble, France; translation for this pamphlet.) 

(c) The Medical Inspection 

"While we were waiting (in the town to which we were 
sent),'' wT:'ites one young woman deported from Lille, "a 
rumor spread among us. Alongside the head of the column 
was a house; one girl after another went into it. I asked 
what it meant and was told that it was a medical inspection. 
Little by little the details came back to us. We were to 
pass, we were told, one by one, completely disrobed,* before 
the major. I appealed to the [French] Mayor of the town : 
'Monsieur, I beg of you, is there no way of escaping this?' 
He made a gesture of helplesanesvS. 'The Germans are mas- 



11 

ters here, madame/ he said; 'whatever be their will, we musi 
submit to it' " 

(Prom the diary of one of the deported women, printed in 
the Revue des deux Mondes, June 15, 1917, p. 861; translated for 
this pamphlet. Other witnesses testify to the same feature of 
the deportations.) 

\ 
(d) Food and Housing 

''The captives who were lodged in private houses did not 
suffer greatly from hunger; the people of the country were 
full of kindness and did their best to furnish them with 
food. But the unfortunates who were housed in factories 
were much more to be pitied. They were given just enough 
to keep body and soul together; they slept on straw; and 
they suffered much from the association with some of their 
companions. During all the months of their captivity some 
of them did not venture once to undress. Frequently, also, 
with the unmistakable design of depraving their morals, one 
or two women were assigned by the Germans to private 
houses occupied by a number of men. What can be said, 
finally, of their compelling young girls, in many cases, to 
take into the houses in which they were lodging soldiers 
of the regiments returning from Verdun?" 

(From the Revue des deux Mondes, June 15, 1917, p. 880; 
translation for this pamphlet.) 

(e) Conditions of Labor for Women and Children 

A German Proclamation 

HoLNON, July 20, 1915. 

All laborers, adults* and children of 15 years and upward, 
are required to work in the fields every day, Sunday in- 
cluded, from 4 in the morning until 8 in the evening (French 
time) . Rest periods allowed : half an hour in the morning, 
an hour at noon, half an hour in the afternoon. 

Violations of this rule will be punished as follows : 

1. [Relates to men.] 



12 

2. Lazy women will be sent back to Holnon to work, and 
after the harvest will be imprisoned for six months. 

3. Lazy children will be punished by thrashing (a coups 
de b^ton). 

In addition to this, the Commandant has authority to 
punish lazy workers with twenty lashes every day. 

Signed, Gloss, Colonel. 

♦The proclamation, which is written in very bad French, here 
reads literally "men"; but the context makes it evident that 
the regulations announced were applicable to persons of both 
sexes (above the age of fourteen). 

(This proclamation was found in th€ French village of Hol- 
non after its evacuation by the German troops; it is reproduced 
in an article by M. Gaston Deschamps, Professor in the College 
de France; Revue des deux Mondes, July 15, 1917, p. 411. Trans- 
lation for this pamphlet.) 

WOULD YOU LIKE THESE THINGS TO HAP- 
PEN TO THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN OF 
MARYLAND? DO YOU THINK THEY OUGHT 
TO HAPPEN TO WOMEN OR CHILDREN ANY- 
WHERE? 



ENSLAVEMENT OF BELGIAN CIVILIANS 

The Belgian Government on September 6, 1917, gave the 
following official statement to a representative of The New 
York Times: 

The press-gang system begun Oct. 6 of last year has continued 
without intermission. Men from 17 to 45 are seized haphazard, 
irrespective of their state of health or social position, but young- 
er men are preferred. They are employed on military work im- 
mediately behind the front, constructing railroads, building 
defenses of wood, and the like. They are treated most brutally, 
beaten without rhyme or reason, and their complaints of illness 
or exhaustion are unheeded. They are not even permitted to 
receive packages of food scraped together by their families from 
their own meagre allowance. Their rations justify only too 
well the name of 'hungerland' by which the scene of their 
miseries is now generally known. The following figures demon- 
■trattt tha horror ef their ooudition: 



13 



Prom the town of Harlebeke 600 men were taken. On July 1 
this year 22 were reported dead by the German authorities and 
108 incapable of working. This is no isolated case; things are 
the same or worse throughout Flanders, 

The last levy at Harlebeke occurred at the end of May. The 
Germans placarded a call for 150 workmen for a munition de- 
pot near the station. The inhabitants refused to reply, where- 
upon the Germans impressed that number and immediately set 
them to work in gangs, with pioneer (engineer) soldiers as 
taskmasters. The same procedure was followed at Deerlyek 
and Vichte. On June 15, at Courtrai, 1,200 men of all classes 
were impressed and set forthwith to work near Menin. The 
departure of Americans from Belgium seems to have removed 
the last scruples of the invaders. 



LATEST GERMAN METHODS OF MURDER AT SEA 

Firing on Sailors Escaping in Life Boats from Torpedoed 

Vessels 

The International Conference of Merchant Seamen, at a 
meeting held in London in August, 1917, has drawn up a 
list of twelve known cases in which, during recent months, 
German or Austrian submarines have fired on seamen and 
others seeking to escape in ships' boats, after the torpedoing 
of their vessels. In four of these cases, the ships were of 
neutral nationality. Typical examples are the following: 

Eavestone, British S. S., February 3, 1917. Submarine 
fired on boats as crew was leaving sinking ship; 5 killed, 
1 wounded. 

Addah, British S. S., sunk by submarine June 15, 1917. 
Submarine opened fire on master's boat, killing eight men; 
after boat had been sunk and men were swimming in water, 
submarine shelled them with shrapnel. 

Baltic, Swedish S. S., June 27, 1917. Boats fired on for 
about an hour after crew abandoned ship. 

Hestia, Dutch S. S., sunk by submarine March 30, 1917. 
One boat fired on by submarine and sunk. Six Dutchmen 
and seven Chinamen killed. 

More recent cases of the same form of atrocity are re- 
ported in press dispatches; for example, in the following 
df September IS: 



14 

A submarine sank the schooner Jane Williams of Arklow 
off the coast of Cornwall, Monday, by shell fire. The gun 
was then turned on a boat containing the crew of six, of 
whom three were killed and the remainder badly wounded. 

On the following day the schooner William of Dublin was 
sunk by a submarine. The open boat in which the crew left 
the vessel was shelled with shrapnel, but only one man was 
wounded. 

Thrown into the Sea to Drown 

A different method was employed in the case of the steam- 
ship Belgian Prince. The following details are taken from 
the affidavit of Thomas A. Bowman, chief engineer, one 
of the three survivors of the crew of 41. After the boats 
had got clear of the ship, Mr. Bowman states: 

The submarine came up to where the boats were and ordered 
the boats to come alongside. The commander ordered the mas- 
ter to step on the submarine, after which he took him down in 
th« submarine. Then all the crew and oflScers were ordered 
aboard, searched, and the lifebelts taken off the most of the crew 
and thrown overboard. I may add during this time tlie Ger- 
mans were very abusive towards the crew. After which the 
German sailors got into two lifeboats, threw the oars, bailers 
and gratings overboard, took out the provisions and compasses 
and then damaged the lifeboats with an axe. The small boat 
was left intact and five German sailors got into her and went to- 
wards the ship. When they boarded her they signalled to the 
submarine with a flash lamp, and then the submarine cast the 
damaged lifeboats adrift and steamed away from the ship for 
about two miles, after which he stopped. About 9 p. m. the sub- 
marine dived and threw everybody in the water without the 
means of saving themselves, as the majority of them had had 
their lifebelts taken off them. After this I was swimming about 
all night until daylight, when I saw that the ship was still 
afloat. So I was swimming towards her with the intention of 
boarding her, when suddenly I saw her explode aft and sink 
stern first, which was about 5:30 a. m. After swimming about 
for some time after this I saw smoke on the horizon, so I swam 
towards it. It proved to be an English patrol boat, which pick- 
ed me up at about 6:30 a. m. Wednesday morning. 

(Aflldavits of all three survivors are printed in the New York 
Tribune, September 15, 1917.) 



15 
These Acts Parts of a System 

Several of the above cases, especially that of the Belgian 
Prince, are evidently attempts to apply the method of ''sink- 
ing without leaving any traces" {spurlos versenken) referred 
to by the German diplomatic representative in Argentina, 
Count Luxburg, in his dispatches that w*ere intercepted by 
our Department of State. The sailors whom he suggested 
that it might be advisable to murder in this manner were 
citizens of a country with which Germany professed to be 
at peace, and of which the author of this proposal of secret 
assassination was the guest. In how many instances the 
Germans succeeded, by similar methods, in sinking neutral 
and other ships ''without leaving any traces" we do not 
know. The cases recorded are those in which a few survivors 
were accidentally left. 



LOOTING 

(a) The Law, and the German Promise 

"The honor and the rights of the family, the life and prop- 
erty of individuals, religious convictions and the exercise 
of public worship, shall be respected [by armed forces oc- 
cupying enemy territory] . Looting is specifically forbidden." 

(Articles 46 and 47 of the Laws of War, adopted by the Hague 
Conference of 1907, which Germany in 1908 promised to ob- 
serve. ) 

(b) The German Practice 

Paris, August 20, 1917. The Germans, according to 
French statements, not only deliberately caused the fires that 
have partially ruined the beautiful and famous Cathedral 
of St. Quentin, but pillaged the city before they set fire to 
a part of it. 



1« 

The vandalism is laid to the door of officers and soldiers 
of the One Hundred and SixteeJith and One Hundred and 
Seventeenth Regiments of the Twenty-fifth German division, 
and more or less directly to the commanders of these xmits, 
respectively, Colonel Gjing, Colonel Klot and General von 
Scharfenstein, who are charged with having ordered a sys- 
tematic pillage of St. Quentin as soon as they entered the 
city. 

Officers, with soldiers to do the heavy work, went about 
the city, it is claimed, and carried off furniture, silverware, 
pianos and valuable pictures and shipped them to Germany. 
They even took safes filled with valuables and did it openly, 
piling their loot onto vans in midday. One officer and a 
number of soldiers were observed, it is said, as they at- 
tempted to steal strong boxes from a bank. The pillaging 
troops worked under orders to establish a depot for loot on 
the route to Cambrai, where "finds" from various towns 
were concentrated. The soldiers received instructions to take 
anything they pleased or that looked valuable, and in con- 
sequence have "cleared out" the city of St. Quentin as well 
as countless smaller places. Numberless men on furlough 
are said to have gone back to their homes laden with loot. 
Nor has money been overlooked in the vandal hunt. One 
soldier of the One Hundred and Sixteenth Regiment is sup- 
posed to have uncovered 30,000 francs and then have appro 
priated it, while smaller sums are missing from a number 
of homes. 

Today there i-emains in St. Quentin homes only old, 
broken and worthless furniture. Everything of value has 
been carried away. 

(Associated Press correspond^n<^e.) 



WAR AS A LEGITIMATE COMMERCIAL ENTER- 
PRISE 

Friedrich Naumann is an important political leader in 
Geraaany, and oHe of the most celebrated and iafluential of 



1? 

German writers oa public qu^tions. He express^ in tbe 
folio wing terms the cynical doctrine that it m natural and 
legitimate for a country to make war for the sole purpose 
of increasing its wealth : 

On the whole, modern war may be regarded aa a proflt-aeek- 
ing business enterprise. This is a point of view which ought 
not to be disguised, but, on the contrary, fully and frankly up- 
held, if we are to find economic justification for war and arma- 
ments. . . . War is waged in the interests of the economic 
development of the State. It is waged with the object of inter- 
vening in the general economic conflict. . . . We must 
judge wars not by the speeches with which they are opened, but 
by the paragraphs with which they are closed. 

("Das blaue Buch von Vaterland und Freiheit", 1913, pp. 263- 
4; cited in Dampierre, "German Imperialism and International 
Law," 1917.) 

This form of "business enterprise" Germany has been 
carrying on for more than three years. Can the civilizec' 
world permit it to be rewarded with success? 



STRIPPING BELGIUM OF MACHINERY TO CUT OFF 
THE NATION'S RESOURCES 

Havre, September 4. Inturmation which has reached the 
Belgian Government from beyond the lines shows that what 
is left of Belgian manufacturing machinery is being sys- 
tematically taken out of the country or destroyed when not 
removed. 

The machines have been taken from all the factories in 
La Providence and other nearby places within the last fort- 
night. 

These advices say that when the manager of the Providence 
mills protested to the German officer in command against 
the proceeding he was told that the orders from Berlin were 
to empty Belgium of its manufacturing resources, so that 
nothing could be produced there, 

(Press dispatch.) 



18 

SINKING SHIPS AS A BUSINESS PROPOSITION 

That one of the objects of the German submarine cam- 
paign is to promote Germany's business interests after the 
war, by destroying the future competition of enemy coun- 
tries in the carrying-trade, is plainly disclosed by the fol- 
lowing passage from an editorial in the principal official 
organ of the Prussian Government, The North German 
Gazette : 

Over against the immense values which the Entente Powers 
are losing daily in ships and cargoe§, foremost of which are 
those of England, not to mention the costs of meeting the sub- 
marine war, our losses are almost infinitesimal. They consist 
only in lost U-boats and munitions. 

This wholly unequal proportion becomes more pronounced as 
the submarine campaign goes on. The more capital our ene- 
mies invest in shipbuilding the greater will be the ratio of 
values wiped out, and to this increased extent we are permitted 
to consider the success of our U-boat campaign as an economic 
gain of immediate importance. 

(Transmitted in Associated Press correspondence, June 15, 
1917.) 

It cannot be doubted that the same business calculation 
has been made by the German authorities in ordering the 
sinking of the ships, and the killing of the sailors, of coun- 
tries with which German}^ has pretended to be at peace. 



WHAT GERMANY UNDERSTANDS BY BEING AT 
PEACE WITH A COUNTRY 

The Case of Norway 

lu 1914 Norway was Germany's principal competitor on 
the continent of Europe in the ocean carrying-trade. The 
tonnage of Norwegian merchant ships (nearly 2,500,000 
tons) was almost half as great as the German (5,000,000 
tons). It would clearly be an excellent thing for Germany's 
shipping business after the war if, in the course of the war, 
a great many Norwegian ships could be sunk. 



But deruiiihy ahd Norway have continued to be ^'at peace.*^ 
(lermany has merely done the following things to her help- 
less neighbor since 1914: 

1. She has maintained a small army of spies in all the 
ports of Norwaj', to report to German submarine command- 
ers the movements of Norwegian and other merchant ships, 
so that the submarines might the more easily destroy them. 

2. She has had manufactured, in German government- 
controlled factories, skillfully disguised bombs, having the 
appearance of lumps of coal, boxes of chewing tobacco, etc. 

3. She has sent such bombs into Norway by the official 
couriers of the German Embassy, whose baggage is, by the 
usual courtesies of diplomatic intercourse, not subject to 
examination. 

4. She has had these bombs placed by her secret agents 
in the holds and coal-bunkers of Norwegian vessels, the 
bombs being timed to explode after the ships were at sea. 

5. By means of bombs, submarines and mines, she has de- 
stroyed more than 400 Norwegian vessels, representing 
nearly 1,000,000 tons. 

6. She has — especially of late — caused her submarines in 
many cases to fire upon Norwegian crews escaping in life 
boats from their sinking ships. 

7. By such means she has killed more than 500 Norwegian 
sailors. Most of these victims have suffered cruel and hor- 
rible deaths. Many have been shot to pieces while swimming 
to catch a piece of wreckage; many have starved to death 
drifting in small boats on the open sea ; others have been 
set adrift in Arctic waters to freeze to death. 

8. According to the general belief in Norway, German 
spies were responsible for the unquestionably incendiary 
fire which in July, 1917, broke out at three places simul- 
taneously in Trondhjem, the principal commercial centre of 
Northern Norway, and destroyed most of the warehouse and 
shipping district of the city. 



9. Germany is still pursuing these methods, and is 
doing her best to destroy Norway's entire merchant shipping, 
or drive it from the seas. 

( See article by N. A. Grevstad, in T^ew York Tribune, Septem- 
ber 16, and interview with Dr. Fridtjof Naneen, September 17, 
1917.) 

This is what it means to be "at peace" with Ger- 
many. Is it not better for a self-respecting people 
to be openly at war with her? Norway is too little, 
too weak, and her women and children are too ex- 
posed to the horrors of a German invasion, to dare 
to resist these treacherous acts of war. The United 
States has the good fortune to be neither little nor 
weak; and it does not mean to have this kind of 
"peace" with any country. But it was only this 
kind of "peace" which the United States could have 
maintained with Germany, even at the cost of ab- 
ject surrender of American rights and disloyalty to 
national duty. These same acts of war Germany was 
constantly committing against us — sinking our ships, 
kilting our sailors and travelers, placing spies in our 
offices of government, burning factories, attempting 
by intrigue and corruption to influence our legislative 
bodies and to stir up sedition among our citizens. In 
determining to put an end to all this, we are defending 
at one and the same time our own rights, the rights of 
weaker nations, and the principles of law and order 
and humanity upon which all permanent peace and 
security among mankind must depend. 



21 

WHY THE WAR MUST BE FOUGHT TO A DECISION 

By President A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard University. 

This war cannot leave the world as it was before. The 
result must either be a better world or a worse one. If 
Germany should win, the principles of her government must 
triumph : the ruthless rule of force, exploiting the earth for 
the benefit of the strong, oppressing other peoples, and beat- 
ing down small, weak, or peaceful nations. 

If the result should be a drawn battle, a stalemate, with 
Germany in her present state of mind, the whole world will 
probably become a series of armed camps, preparing for 
another fray and compelled by the very conditions by which 
they are faced to adopt the methods of warfare Germany 
has introduced — that is, the nation in arms, using every 
resource at its command and striving to destroy by every 
means the resources of the people to which it is opposed. 
Can anyone contemplate without horror a planet whose 
inhabitants devote their efforts to devising scientific pro- 
cesses to make it unfit for human habitation? Yet such is 
the result that we must at least contemplate if the present 
war should decide nothing, leaving the belligerents with 
their former ambitious and principles, with fiercer hatreds, 
and a better knowledge of what the next war will signify. 

If, on the other hand, the side on which we are fighting 
wins, it may mean a better world, reorganized on a basis 
of justice and peace; and a large part of the result may 
depend on us, both in the field and at the council table. 

Let us be perfectly clear in our own minds. We pro- 
claim that we are fighting for democracy, but President 
Wilson has put it more accurately when he said that we 
were at war to make the world safe for democracy. We 
are not fighting to impose any form of government upon 
an unwilling people. That would be contrary to the prin 
ciples of political liberty. 



22 

If any people prefer to be ruled by a monarch, it is their 
affair, provided they mind their own business and live peace- 
ably with their neighbors; a military autocracy that goes 
forth conquering and to conquer, the world must subdue or 
it will have no peace; moreover, the oppression of one race 
by another must, so far as possible, be removed. For that 
reason we cannot consider the return to Germany of her 
former colonies, that their people may be exploited as they 
have been in the past. 

We are at war to prevent any nation from imposing an 
autocratic military system on the world or any people; and 
when the Allies have succeeded in so doing, they, and any 
other peoples that sincerely desire a better and more peace- 
ful world, must solemnly resolve that no such catastrophe 
shall occur again. 

(Address before the National Safety Council, New York City, 
September 12, 1917.) 



WHAT WE, ARE CONTENDING FOR 

By President Woodrow Wilson. 

In any event our duty i^s clear. No nation, no group of 
nations, has the right while war is in progress to alter or 
disregard the principles which all nations have agreed upon 
in mitigation of the horrors and sufferings of war; and if 
the clear right of American citizens should ever unhappily 
be abridged or denied by any such action we should, it 
seems to me, have in honor no choice as to what our own 
course should be. 

For my own part, I cannot consent to any abridgment of 
the rights of American citizens in any respect. The honor 
and self-respect of the nation are involved. We covet peace, 
and shall preserve it at any cost but the loss of honor. To 
forbid our people to exercise their rights for fear we might 
be called upon to vindicate them would be a deep humilia 



23 

J 

aon indeed. It would be an implicit, all but an explicK, 

/acquiescence in the violation of the rights of mankind every- 

/ where, and of whatever nation or allegiance. It would be 

/ a deliberate abdication of our hitherto proud position as 

spokesmen, even amidst the turmoil of war, for the law and 

the right. It would make everything this Government has 

attempted, and everything that it has achieved duringvthis 

terrible struggle of nations, meaningless and futile. 

It is important to reflect that if in this instance we allow 
expediency to take the place of principle, the door would 
inevitably be opened to still further concessions. Once 
accept a single abatement of right, and many other humili- 
ations would certainly follow, and the whole fine fabric of 
international law might crumble under our hands piece by 
piece. What we are contending for in this matter is of the 
very essence of the things that have made America a sover- 
eign nation. She cannot yield them without conceding her 
own impotency as a nation, and making virtual surrender of 
her independent position among the nations of the world. 

(Letter to Senator William J. Stone, February 24, 1916.) 




020 914 088 3 
THE MEANING OF AMERICA'S WAR 

By President Woodrow Wilson. 

The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are n^ 
common wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life 

We are at the beginning of an age in which it will b^ 
insisted that the same standards of conduct and of respon 
sibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations 
and their governments that are observed among the indivi- 
dual citizens of civilized States 

We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose 
because we know that in such a government, following such 
methods, we can never have a friend; and that in the pres 
ence of its organized power, always Isring in wait to accom- 
plish we know not what purpose, can be no assured security 
for the democratic governments of the world. We are now 
about to accept the gauge of battle with this natural foe to 
liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the 
nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. 
We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false 
pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace 
of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the Ger^ 
man peoples included; for the rights of nations, great and 
small, and the privilege of men everywhere to choose theii 
way of life and of obedience. 

The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace 
must be planted upon the tested foundations of political 
liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no 
conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for our- 
selves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall 
freely make. We are but one of the champions of the 
rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights 
have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of 
nations can make them. 

(Address to Congress, April 2, 1917.) 




111 

020 914 088 3 



